Enemy Ships
In FTL, there are many enemy ships you will encounter, below are different ships and how to fight them. General information Most races have three types of ships: *Scout *Assault *Bomber The Rebels are a notable difference, with their Riggers and Elite Fighters, as well as the Slug Interceptors and Light-Cruisers. Enemy ships can have Shields, or Weapons that exceed 8, which is the limit for players. Most commonly, this is seen late game with Rebel AI Assault ships have been seen with 9 or 10 in shields. Other examples include Crystal Bombers with 10 Shield, Slug Assault ships with 10 Weapons, and Rebel Elite with 10 weapons. Typically its the larger more powerful ships that will go beyond 8 limit. No other system exceeds the 8 limit, though it should be noted the Rebel Flagship would if it used a normal boarding drone or a normal Defense Mk II drone, but instead it uses special versions that use less energy. Using the ComaToes Profile/SavedGame Editor (AKA FTL Editor v15), it is possible to get a range of stats on the enemy ships (Hull Strength, Shields, Weapons, etc). The ships appeared in two different list. One list had all the player ships, along with the Rebel Flagship models, a couple of ships from the tutortial, and a handful of enemy Rebel ships. One of Rebel ships is called "DEFAULT (Rebel Rigger)" and the other two are Rebel Elites. The other list has all the regular enemies plus one Zoltan ship called "ZOLTAN_PEACE (Energy Fighter)," which has no weapons or shields. This last ship is likely used for the Zoltan Cruiser quest. Generally enemy ships have a limit to the amount of missiles they use. Confirmed with Basilisk against Mantis Scout. Defense Drones kept taking down missiles and then the light on the enemy weapon remained green forever and the weapon never fired. Limt is unknown. General Strategies Often, you find that the best all-round weapon in FTL is a simple laser weapon, such as the Dual Lasers or the Burst Laser Mk. 2. This is because: *Beams can be stopped very easily with only a layer or 2 of shields *Missiles can be easily shot down by defence drones and can use up your missile storage quickly *Bombs do no hull damage and use missiles as well. *While e.g. the Crystal weapons are better than laser weapons, they can be very hard to obtain (and while they consume no missile resource, these projectiles can be shot down by defender drones as well). However, when combined with Laser weapons, Beam weapons are often extremely effective as they can't miss and can do mass damage easily with the enemy shields down. Usual targets Generally, you want to aim at these three locations in an enemy ship: * Weapons * Shields * Cockpit * Medbay (if you're boarding) Sometimes, you can skip these if: * (Weapons) You have good shields/evasion so the enemy can't/probably can't hit you * (Shields) You have only missile/bomb weapons * (Cockpit) You only use boarding (and the opponent is not powering up it's FTL or you're confident that you can take out the cockpit or the engines before they jump) * (Medbay) You don't care about the usual additional rewards for killing all the crew and just want to destroy the ship or don't have a crew teleporter installed. Useful information : Enemies with missile/bomb or drone weapons have a limited supply of these, so if for some reason you're forced into a long fight, and you don't want to jump away from the battle, you only have to deal with limited number of shots from these weapons/limited ammount of drones used (this is generally more relevant in case of on board drones like anti personel, boarding, and repair drones) : If you're sure that you cannot defeat or disable an enemy ship that wants to jump away to warn the rebel fleet, if you jump away before they do, you don't get the penalty of not stopping them (so the rebel fleet don't get to advance 2 times the normal rate for the next turn). : Normally you cannot target weapons at a cloaked enemy ship, and your weapons don't charge while the enemy is cloaked, nor you can see the inside of the ship, however if you have boarders on their ship (be it drone or your crew) the enemy ship stays revealed during their cloak, you can target your weapons, and any weapon that is charged is able to fire at the cloaked vessel, hoewever you still need to overcome the increased dodge rate they have while cloaked (+60%), this means that only beam weapons can hit cloaked ships reliably this way. Crystal Ships Crystal ships use crystal weapons and the lockdown bombs, drones, and on a rare occasion, they can exceed the 8 limit. They come in two sizes, Scouts and Bombers CRYSTAL_SCOUT (Crystal Scout) *Hull 7 *4 weapon slots *Power 9-25 *Weapon 4-8 *Shields 2-8 *Engines 2-5 *Pilot 1-3 *O2 1-3 *Optional systems **Medbay 0-3 CRYSTAL_BOMBER (Crystal Bomber) *Hull 9 *4 weapon slots *Power 9-25 *Weapon 4-10 *Shields 2-10 *Engines 2-5 *Pilot 1-3 *O2 1-3 *Optional systems **Doors 0-3 **Medbay 0-3 Engi Ships Engi Ships are easily distinguishable with their trademark gray hull and squarish design (see below). A Drone system is always present on Engi ships, always accompanied with at least one active Defense Drone. If a MedBay is present in the ship, then the ship is guarenteed to have MedBot Dispersal, which allows the Engies to take extra beatings during an assault Strategy: The best way to counter engi ships is with a crew teleporter (and a bomb weapon if the ship has a medbay). Bombing the medbay and sending in a boarding party (Engi ships rarely have anti-personnel drones) will guarentee victory. Engi Scout Engi Scouts are very small but nevertheless decent ships; the almost always have defense drones and usually attack drones too. Beams and heavy lasers are fairly common on Engi Scouts, so if you have low shields watch out. Boarding crews annihilate these ships because they are always (except in one random event) crewed only by Engi, who lose to every other race in a fight. CIRCLE_SCOUT (Engi Scout) *Hull 7 *4 weapon slots *3 drone slots *Power 11-25) *Drones 2-8 *Weapon 4-8 *Shields 2-8 *Engines 2-5 *Pilot 1-3 *O2 1-3 *Augments-EngiMed-bot Dispersal *Optional systems **Doors 0-3 **Medbay 0-3 Engi Bomber Engi Bombers have very crammed rooms, making a beam weapon devestating once shields are taken down. CIRCLE_BOMBER (Engi Bomber) *Hull 9 *4 weapon slots *3 drone slots *Power 11-25) *Drones 2-8 *Weapon 4-10 *Shields 2-10 *Engines 2-5 *Pilot 1-3 *O2 1-3 *Augments-Engi Med-bot Dispersal *Optional systems **Doors 0-3 **Medbay 0-3 Federation ships Federation Scout They usually don't have any kind of medbay, and only two crewmembers, so they are really easy to board. Federation Bomber Strategy: If you have a pike beam, and some sort of weapon to get rid of the shields, you can hit 6 rooms with one laser, as shown below. Note: Federation ships can only be fought against if they are pirates, and thus the colour scheme is not that of the real Federation ships. However, they can be met as friendly ships asking for help. Mantis Ships Mantis warships are coated (appropriately) in a red hull, and are very symmetrical in room layout. Mantis ships typically carry heavy weapons as well as a crew teleporter (even in pirated Mantis ships). Unlike other ships, Mantis ships are typically not homogenous, often carrying Engi slaves to make up for the Mantis' lack of repairing skill. Rockmen are a less common sight on these ships and Zoltan and Slugs very rarely appear. Humans are aboard mantis ships when they are pirated. Strategy: Mantis boarding parties can be devastating, as they can do so much damage to crew. Unless you have well trained fighters, or an anti-personnel drone, try suffocating the boarding party. It's also advisable to have a defense drone, as mantis ships usually have highly destructive missile weapons. Fire weapons devastate Mantis ships, provided they don't have anyone on board the ship to put out the fires. If you have a boarding party which has atleast two strong members, it is easy to kill the crew of smaller mantis ships, but it is more challenging, and unless you know what you are doing, and is unadvisable, to board larger mantis ships like the bombers. Rebel Ships The rebel ships utilise advanced technology, and are often better than the other ships at their stage. Elite Rebel Ship You will encounter this ship if the rebel fleet catches up with you, or at the last sector, The Last Stand, where you will commonly fight these at different beacons. It is recommended to stay away from the rebel fleet in the early stages until you manage to upgrade things like your shields, engines and such. Except for encounters with these ships in The Last Stand, it is generally best to jump away once your FTL is charged, as the pursuing rebel ships provide no reward other than one fuel. Note: Elite Rebel fighters can have TEN in weapon levels. Rebel Fighter These ships typically use Basic Lasers, Burst Laser Mk 1, and Small Bomb in earlier sectors, with Heavy Lasers also commonly used but initially depowered. In later stagess these can become quite a threat with Burst Laser II and sometimes even Burst Laser III, Heavy Laser II, and breach Missiles. In sectors 5 and up crew teleporters are common but luckily the rebel ships always have a crew of only humans. Even if the ship has a medbay it can be defeated with a 4 size teleporter and at least 3 mantis for boarding with one other crewmember. Rebel Rigger Rebel Riggers often use drones, countering missiles and often ships without combat specialists as they send in boarding drones. Rebel Riggers are usually encountered trying to jump away for some reason so target the cockpit and drone control before moving on to the weapons after shields are down. System Repair Drones are almost always aboard these ships after sector 4. Beam weapons are often encountered on these ships and it is not uncommon for a Rebel Rigger to have one Beam Drone and a Mini Beam with no shield damaging weapons. They can have up to at least 4 Drones, some time they "overcrowd" the drone control room and, as a result, make repair impossible after it's shut down. AI-Controlled Rebel Ships Automated ships are unmanned ships. This means that they automatically repair systems over time and have no oxygen on board, do note that rooms with hull breaches will not be repaired as putting out fires/repairing hull breaches is a higher repair priority than repairing the subsystem, and the AI ships have no way of repairing said breaches. Be careful if you're using boarding as a way of taking out some initial systems (e.g. Shields), since you will need an at least level 2 teleporter to be able to teleport 100 health crew members back before suffocating . Rock and Crystal members can last a little longer due to their higher health and respective abilities, thus with these the boarding is survivable even with level 1 teleporter. Auto-Scout The Auto-Scout always has: * A cockpit. * Engines. * A weapon control. It can have: * Shields. * Cloaking. It starts with 10 missiles. Strategy Auto-Scouts more than make up for their lack of defence and health with a deadly array of weapons, high-power engines, and cloaking. Take advantage of their fraility before they can do any real damage. High shields can be penetrated without misile weapons via ionization. Auto-Assault The Auto-Assault always has: * A cockpit. * An engine room. * A weapons room. * Shields. Note: Sometimes, Auto-Assault ships may have FIVE '''shields. It is pracitally impossible to penetrate the shields with just one of the non-missile weapons. The five shields may be a bug in the game, but this may be why the developers gave missiles 5 shield piercing in the game. It can have: * Drone Control. It starts with '''10 missiles. It can have either of the following drones: * Anti-Ship Drone Mark I * Anti-Ship Drone Mark II * Anti-Ship Beam Drone I Weapons Both ships can have either of the following weapons: * Defense Laser Mark I * Burst Laser Mark I * Burst Laser Mark II * Burst Laser Mark III * Heavy Laser Mark I * Heavy Laser Mark II * Leto Missiles * Artemis Missiles * Hermes Missile * Mini Beam * Halberd Beam * Small Bomb * Fire Bomb * Ion Bomb * Ion Blast * Heavy Ion * Ion Blast Mark II Rock Ships Rock ships often rely on their missile and beam weaponry. This can be easily negated though, by having a defense drone as it effectively renders missiles useless, whereas the beams practically won't even touch you if you have a good shield (Level 2 is often good, as it stops everything short of a Glaive Beam).They are equiped with Rock plating augmentation. Rock Scout Rock Scouts have very cramped rooms, often allowing you to capitalize with the pike beam and hit 6 rooms after shields are down. The Rock Armor Plating is only a slight nusciance until sector 5, where Breach Missiles and Halberd/Glaive Beams become a common sight on these ships. Cloaking, as always, is useful. Boarding crews shut these ships down, especially with the Basilisk or Carnelian. Pirated Rock Scouts are a very common sight, but when the ship is not pirated it is inadvisable to use fire weapons as the Rockmen are immune to fire. Rock Fighter Rock Fighters can just be considered a better form of Rock Scouts and should be fought in the same way. They have teleporter capability so watch out if you have no Mantis, Rock, or Crystal crewmembers. Heavy missiles, heavy lasers, and rarely Glaive Beams are often on these ships so prioritize the weapons with your bombs and missiles. Rock Assault These powerful ships are never encountered pirated so never use fire weapons and only use Mantis and skilled Rock boarders. Luckily these ships only spawn in the Rock Controlled and Rock Homeworlds sectors except in very rare cases. Missiles and Burst Lasers are the most effective counter for this ship. One is fought to unlock the Rock Cruiser; do not attack it and focus on repair. It will jump away. Slug Ships Slug Interceptor - Slug Interceptors have no doors connecting the oxygen or engine system, so killing the crew on harmless versions should be extremely easy, as you can destroy the engines to prevent them from jumping away, then the oxygen to kill the crew - slowly, that is. These ships are usually no trouble but have four weapons at times so don't slack off. Slug Light-Cruiser Slug Light-Cruisers are effective ships that are most commonly found in, naturally, Slug sectors. The Slugs are a treacherous race, so one of your systems (usually Oxygen, Doors, or Shields) will be weakened or destroyed about 50% of the time. Encountering these ships in Plasma Storms is possible., so prepare to divert power. Fire Beams, Breach Bombs, and Burst Lasers are commonly used by these ships. Counter with boarders and fire weapons of your own. Slug Assault Some Slug Assault ships can have level nine weapons. The most powerful ones in sector 7 can even be better than the Rebel Flagship phase 1, so there is no shame in jumping away if necessary. Slug Assault ships should be fought with beams and be sure to keep killing the crew as the "most likely to succeed" option. Zoltan Ships All Zoltan ships (except ones in sector one on easy mode) carry a Zoltan Shield, which impedes ALL weapons, drones, and teleports. Although uncommon, it's not unheard of to see Zoltan working with Engies in the same ship. Zoltan prefer to arm their ships with ion and beam weapons at every opportunity. Strategy: Beam drones cut through the overshield in a jiffy, and don't miss at the same time. Most beams (even fire or anti-bio beams) hit the shield twice when firing. Once the Zoltan Shield is down, a boarding party will easily get rid of the enemy zoltan crew members. (provided the medbay on the enemy ship is down) Another strategy is to get ion weapons since they do double the effect on the Zoltan Shield. The Ion Blast Mk II alone will take the Zoltan Shield down in 12 seconds provided it does not miss. Ion bombs deal 8 damage to the shield and take it down immediately. Note: Beams do two room damage effect on Zoltan Shields whereever you fire them. The Rebel Flagship The Rebel Flagship is the final ship you can encounter in a play through of Faster Than Light. This ship is also most likely the hardest ship you will encounter in Faster Than Light. It has three forms, each one meant to be harder than the last. It has 4 layers of shields, high dodge rate, and an individual room for each type of weapon (ion, missile, burst laser and beam) which is separate from the other rooms and can be destroyed. However, there is a crew member in each of these and thus they will be repaired. In its first form, it can cloak itself (loses for 2nd stage), in the second form it has drones (loses these for 3rd stage), and finally in its third form it has a Zoltan shield, it uses its teleporter and shoots between 5 and 10 lasers from apparently nowhere. Upon winning a section from it, a bit of it will be broken off from the ship, starting from the left, then the right and finally the ship is destroyed and you win the game. If you kill all its crew, you will get a message that a powerful AI controls it now. That's bad news: it will now automatically repair systems (rooms with breaches will be not repaired when the AI takes control, so if you use breach bombs in this encounter, the AI taking control may be good news). General Strategy: It helps greatly to have at least the following: *Cloaking *Teleporter *Lvl. 6+ Weapons with at least 6 or 7 laser bolts or a Mk. 2 Ion blast *Defense Drone Mk. 1 (practically better than Mk. 2) *3 or 4 layers of shields *Lvl. 6+ engine You should first kill the human in the missile weapon (the second weapons room from the right) and destroy it with your teleporter. Next, you can do the same for the beam, however it is not required. Do this in all stages, as 1. it is the easiest way to destroy it and 2. the three missiles can easily get past even a Mk. 2 defense drone. Next, just destroy its shields (Mk. 2 Ion blast can remove all layers if set to autofire, assuming it doesn't miss, and it does not cloak before you can permanently disable it's shields) and cloaking, and try to kill some crew while you're at it. Often, they will all go to fix the shields so just wait until there are 2-4 people and launch a barrage at them. Forms: First stage Special Attack: None Special Defense: The rebel flagship has quite a longlasting cloak. This can make the fight difficult, because it allows him to repair, heal, recharge. It has quite a big crew too, so this can cause some problems getting through. Strategy: It helps if you view this battle not just as a battle you must win at all cost; but as a preperation step for the next two battles. Although all systems will be repaired between fights, dead crew will remain dead though. Killing all of the crew results in the ship's advanced AI taking over and all systems begin to auto-repair. Be aware that it loses the turret and cloak on the left after the first fight and the turret on the right and drone control after the second fight. This is the only phase where it has each of the triple-turrets. You need 3 shield, at least 30% evasion (estimation) to not die quickly. Defense drones and cloak can help negate damage too. Another useful strategy if you have a teleporter is to send crewmembers, either two humans or one rock or one mantis generally works, in each of the offensive turrets, killing the crew and destroying the weapon. If you keep all your defensive ablities fully powered during this time, you can avoid most of the incoming damage, and once they are destroyed, he will have no way of damaging your ship (for the first stage), which means you can destroy him without having to worry about his weapons. Second stage If you emerged victorious from your first battle, the section furthest to the left breaks off, taking away its ability to cloak, its ion weapon the door system, and up to three crew members. Special Attack: '''The special attack of the second stage consist of a large squadron of anti-ship drones (around 5-10, mostly beam drones). This special attack can be very destructive if they get through your shields. '''Special Defense: The boss has a defense drone deployed during this stage, rendering missiles practically useless (except Pegasus missiles that fires 2 projectiles, or if you have multiple missile systems and you sync up their shots) Strategy: Despite the weaker special attack, this isn´t an easy stage, however. The defense drone and boarding drone can make life quite hard. Especially since killing the boarding drone, just makes him fire a new one almost immediately (probably causing a new breach too). There are three ways of dealing with the boarding drone: *Shooting it down with a defense drone *Having improved blast doors and ignore it until it enters an important room *Damage the drone facility enough so that it stops moving The power surge with all the drones can be devastating if you aren't careful. The Anti-ship drones will all fire at once, and can fairly easily get through your shields if you don't evade enough of the shots. If your shields drop to zero even for a fraction of a second, you may get hit by a lot of beam drones all at once. This can be catastrophic. One easy way to protect yourself from this is to activate your cloak with only one power bar. The cloak will wear off shortly before the drones go away (likely not leaving them enough time to hurt you) and will cooldown just in time for you to cloak again for the next power surge. If you use 2 or 3 power bars on the cloak, it will not finish its cooldown in time. This does not work with the laser burst power surge in the third stage, as the surges come too often to cloak for all of them. Third stage Special Attack: The special attack of the third stage consists of a burst of laser-like attacks, about 8-9 shots that arrive almost simultaneously, they look like heavy laser blasts but do only 1 damage if get beyond your shields and hit, a well timed use of cloaking is the best way to minimize damage, or highly powered engines, shields, and 1-2 defense drone mark II (this latter is quite intensive on power requirement, but if you are in a bind this way can negate most of the damage if not all). '''Special Defense: '''A zoltan shield that takes 12 damage. Sometimes if it's Zoltan shield is down, after a power surge it does not use it's special attack but recharges it's Zoltan shields to full. Restoring it's Zoltan shields will destroy all boarding drones (unpowered boarding drones may be unaffected), however boarding parties are unaffected, aside from the fact of you not being able teleport them out. '''Strategy: '''The third stage, the attacks of the rebel ship are the strongest. Where the previous rounds a defensive strategy may have worked, the best way to deal with this stage is to deal as much damage as quickly as possible. The AI usually uses its teleporter to board you straight away, so be prepared to deal with that before you start the third stage fight (they are human boarders, and arrive only 2 at a time, so if you have trained boarders you should either wait with them on your own ship to catch the enemy boarders, or board their ship before they can do yours, and take out their teleporter, or sometimes they don't even board you if you've already boarded them). Category:Other ships